Davinci Virtual

A common question that I receive from small business owners is “how can I market my business the most the effectively?” The answer to that question, is that unfortunately there is no standard answer.  Instead, you must learn what will work for your business & industry, and what your target audience responds to.  Although there is not set formula, here are a few tips to help you along your journey.

• Know your audience.  This may seem like a no-brainer, but you will be surprised home many of my clients think they know their customers, only to find out they were wrong.  Knowing your audience means more than knowing what target demographic you are going after.  It means understanding who your market is, how they work, why they purchase, etc. 

• Don’t underestimate the power of the barter.  Partnering with the small business bureau in your area could open up a whole range of opportunities for your business, including a barter system, where you exchange services with other members of the organization.  This is a great way to spread the word about your business.

• Don’t be afraid to try some unusual marketing techniques.  Trying to understand what marketing techniques will work for your business means that you should be open to new methods.  Don’t be afraid of expanding your business to the web, or turning to social media.  It’s using unconventional techniques that  will get you noticed by consumers.

As you begin to incorporate these tips into your strategy, think about some other lessons you have learned, and tell me what worked (or didn’t work) for you!

Brand monitoring has become an essential task for any individual or corporation. Marketers must understand that conversations are being held on the web with or without our consent, and when conversations start on the web, like a forest fire, they travel very fast and wreak havoc along the way; what might start out as a mere tweet, may turn into a blog post and potentially national news. Yesterday I told you about how to effectively listen to your audience.  Read on to learn how to properly respond.

Talking Back
Once you have set up an effective monitoring plan, and you have listened to what the community is saying, it is time to talk back.  Here are some guidelines for communicating with online users about your brand.

• Respond quickly to criticism.  If you don’t respond quickly to criticism, you can lose control of the conversation.
• Admit your mistakes. Why is this so difficult for brands? When you mess up, the only—and I mean ONLY—acceptable response is to take full ownership, explain what went wrong, and share your action plan for fixing the mistake.
• Empower your employees to become problem solvers. As a customer, there is nothing worse than having a full-on collision with bureaucracy. We’ve all been there. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’ll have to check with my supervisor.” Or worse, “I’d like to help, but we have a policy against that.” Tim Ferriss, author of the bestseller, “The 4-Hour Workweek”, tells his employees and contractors, “Keep the customers happy. If it is a problem that takes less than $100 to fix, use your judgment and fix the problem yourself. This is official written permission and a request to fix all problems that cost under $100 without contacting me (p. 105).”
• Exceed your customers’ expectations. Every customer problem is an opportunity to create a new amazing experience. But it’s not enough to meet their expectations, you have to exceed them. Anything less is merely restitution.

Conclusions
Understanding brand monitoring and its impact on your business is critical. Static websites are no longer the pinnacle of communication, as today’s consumer seeks engagement and two-way conversations.  As consumers are increasingly empowered to take control of brands online through user generated content, blogs, forums etc, marketers must adopt new ways of approaching brand management and marketing their products/services.

Type your name into Google and see what happens.  If you have multiple forms of informative content about you appearing in the top ten, congratulations, you are pretty well branded.  If your results are slim, however, you have some work to do to increase the power of your name.  Large corporations understand the power of a name, but now, we are in an “Age of the Individual,” where your name is your brand, and the power of your brand determines your success.

There are many great ways to increase your individual brand power, and here are a few tips to get you started.

• Start a blog.  Become a thought leader in your industry, by starting a blog and writing about relevant new technologies, or business techniques.  The key to this method, is understanding what your audience (or potential audience) wants to read and learn about.  Tip: Don’t be afraid to get a little controversial.
• Join a Social Networking website, and use your name as your login.  My LinkedIn profile is www.linkedin.com/in/laurencandito, and as a result, when I google my name, my LinkedIn profile is the first result on the page.  What is better that having your personal resume networking page at the top of the search results, pushing people to your expertise?
• Get your name out there.  Post to forums, comment on other people’s blogs, spark conversations with colleagues across the Internet.  Keep your commentary intelligent and meaningful, and push users back to your personal websites (i.e. blog, social networking sites, etc).  Always remember, communication is critical.  The key to developing a personal brand is engagement.  You must spark conversations with other people to be successful.

By following these tips, you can successfully develop your own personal brand and differentiate yourself from your competitors.  In today’s global society, your name is everything, manage it well and you will find success.  Get lost in the shuffle, and you may end up struggling to keep your head above water.

One of the best methods to gain visibility and recognition in your particular market or industry is to become a “thought leader,” described by Wikipedia as: “A futurist or person who is recognized among their peers and mentors for innovative ideas and demonstrates the confidence to promote or share those ideas as actionable distilled insights.”  Becoming a thought leader is not easy, despite the term being used so openly nowadays.  Here are a few pointers to help get you started…

The first step in this process, is develop a method of communicating with your public.  Blogs and Microblogs (i.e. twitter) are great mediums to spark communication, but be careful, you must be 100% transparent in your messaging, or you will push readers away.

Once you have a communication medium set up, your next step is to begin writing.  Write about what inspires you.  Write about new, innovative technologies in your market.  Develop white papers, or guides, to pass along to your audience.

Spread the word about your writing.  One of the great things about social media is the abundance of tolls at your disposal.  Push your content out to Social Networks, Bookmarking Sites, and even other bloggers by commenting on their posts.

Now that you have been writing for a few months (that’s right, this will not happen overnight), begin applying for speaking engagements to get your name out there.  Start small (local) and work up to the big leagues (national).

Lastly, remember, this will take significant time and effort.  You won’t see an overnight shift.  You must be willing to work hard to achieve the results you want to see.

The media landscape has undergone a drastic change over the past fifteen years. In the past, television was the main form of media consumption by consumers, now, the internet and video games have emerged on the top of the list, changing the media landscape and forcing marketers to look at consumers in a new light.

In the past, marketers worked off of a model of what I like to call “intrusion.” They had a captive audience that had little to no options for content, and that grudgingly accepted commercial advertisements. There was no time-shifting, like there is today, where users can choose what they want to watch, when they want to watch it.

Now, as a result of these changes, marketers must use a model of “engagement” to reach consumers. This new media landscape drives interaction between a company and it’s customers, and with the numerous content options for consumers, and their newfound ad-avoidance, thanks to time controlling devices such as TiVo, companies have really lost a large amount of control.

As a result of this shift companies must change their tactics to better reach their consumers, and to do so successfully, they must remember the following three things:

1.) Consumers now want to receive messaging that provides value to them, not messaging that is trying to sell them on a product or idea.

2.) The new consumer values transparency, so marketers must reach out to consumers in an open and honest manner. Gone are the days of marketing and sales gimmicks.

3.) Consumers want engagement – a two way conversation – they do not want to be talked “to”, they want to be able to talk back.

Remember, we are now living in a time of “on-demand” consumption, where consumers have a multitude of options trying to reach them. The successful ones will follow the suggestions above, while the others will simply get lost in the pack.

Virtual assistants and virtual offices can help create a whole new marketing dynamic. Thinking creatively about marketing is a great way to gain entrance into potential consumer communities.

Start by  pulling out your old business plan…are you dusting it off? Do you know where it is? Do you even have a plan? If the answer is yes to any of these questions…great! You are in the perfect setting to revise/rewrite/create a plan to get your product/service to the people who will want it.

Assess your current customers. Who are they? Define them as specifically as you can. Include age, gender, marital status, children…the more you know about who is buying your product and why, the more you can start thinking about the audiences you are missing.

Now, think outside of the box. Who could be using your product or service, but isn’t? Do Work at Home Moms need to know that you have a virtual assistant service? Maybe you have been reaching out to entrepreneurs, and it is time to narrow it down, to target a specific niche.

Start with a list of ways to reach your newly defined group. Some possibilities include: blogging, forums, local family newspapers,  online or in person meet ups. Reach out to people in a genuine way. Being overbearing or “overmarketing” will cause you to lose the trust of the community…a hard thing to repair.

Keep an eye open for new approaches…use your creativity to keep you tuned in to market opportunities. And keep trying until it sticks…